What is Mindfulness Therapy?

Online Mindfulness Therapy describes a particular way of working with anxiety, depression, stress and other forms of emotional suffering. This form of Online Psychotherapy is a combination of Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), experiential psychotherapy, NLP and Buddhist Psychology.

The essence of this approach is to help people become aware of the underlying patterns of habitual emotional and cognitive reactivity that creates and sustains their anxiety and emotional suffering. These patterns of reactivity are so habitual for most people that we are unaware of them and blindly follow them whenever they arise.

We simply react out of habit. There is no choice or say in the matter and we blindly accept that this is the only way of being. We say, “I am angry because…”, or “I am upset because…”, and then blame our emotional state on external factors. perhaps the first essential step to take is to realize that there is no because. We have simply become conditioned to react in a certain way to external circumstances, but there is actually no underlying law that says we must feel this way because of what happened externally.

The next step we take in our path of Mindfulness Therapy, or meditation is to see that we are not who we think we are.

YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS…YOU ARE THE CONSCIOUS SPACE IN WHICH THOUGHTS ARISE.

When we really understand this, we will begin to break free from the prison of our beliefs, views, habitual thoughts and emotional reactions. This change in our identity from the contents of the mind to the container, the spacious aspect of unconditioned mind, then healing can begin.

Online psychotherapy is becoming more and more popular both because of the obvious convenience of online therapy or counseling sessions, but also because this represents a new approach to helping you manage common emotional problems such as anxiety and depression or OCD or PTSD or any other form of emotional stress.

The approach that I teach is based on Mindfulness Therapy, which really focuses on helping you change the emotional patterns of habitual reactivity that cause anxiety and depression. These reactive patterns become established, often in childhood, and they stay with us through most of our life until we begin to develop much more consciousness of these underlying, essentially, unconscious habits. People are not used to challenging these habits, they think that they are natural and unchangeable, but all habits can be changed, including the emotional habits of anxiety and depression.

The key is to start to focus conscious awareness on those habits. Habits rely on unconsciousness, they thrive when we do not look at them, when they are allowed to simply proliferate unconsciously. But the moment you start to focus conscious awareness on habits, then they begin to change and begin to lose their momentum. So, the whole focus of Mindfulness Therapy is to apply conscious awareness to your emotional habits. This is by far the most direct way to transform anxiety and depression or other forms of emotional suffering.

Instead of talking about our anxiety, instead of talking about the history and trying to understand or to gain insight into why we are anxious, instead of trying to change our belief systems, trying to challenge our thoughts about anxiety, we instead look at the underlying process itself and how we become so identified with our emotional habits.

It is almost impossible to convince a person that they should not feel anxious if they are identified with a belief system that creates anxiety. Simple rational argument will not change that belief because the belief is charged emotionally with that anxiety.

You have to start changing the anxiety itself, and one of the most important things that we learn during mindfulness therapy of anxiety or depression is what really causes that emotional suffering are not thoughts but emotional imagery. How we see the thoughts or beliefs in the mind is what gives them power and what makes them real for us.

Explore the Emotional Imagery

So, one of the central things we do during our therapy sessions together is explore the imagery of the emotions and making that imagery conscious, because when we can see how the imagery works then we can begin to change it, we can change the emotional imagery, and when you change that imagery you end up changing the emotion itself.

There is plenty of evidence for this to be found in our language. When we say things like, “I feel overwhelmed” by my emotions that indicates something about the emotional imagery. The imagery itself occurs at a higher position relative to us; the emotion is literally above our head, overwhelming us. It also tells us that the emotion imagery must be very large, because it is practically impossible to be overwhelmed by an emotion that is very small, the size of an ant! It must be very large to overwhelm you.

Change the Imagery and you change the Emotion

This is where our mindfulness work gets very exciting. Once you see how the emotional imagery works, you can start experimenting on changing the imagery. See what happens when you make the emotion smaller in size and move it to a lower position, perhaps put it on the ground. By experimenting with Creative Imagination you will eventually discover changes that have a direct effect on the emotion, significantly reducing its intensity. This leads to what I call Resolution Pathways that essentially allow the emotion to defuse itself and release that trapped emotional energy so that when we revisit the triggers, we do not feel anxiety or depression or trauma.

The problem is really that the emotion became stuck in frozen imagery. When we bring mindfulness to that emotional imagery it allows the imagery to change and this is what leads to resolution and healing.

So this is what we explore during Mindfulness Therapy. We start to dissect the emotional imagery and then start exploring changing it in a very practical, direct way. This provides one of the most effective ways to actually change the intensity of our emotions.

So, if you would like to learn more about emotional imagery and how to change anxiety and depression by changing its imagery, go to my website and then if you would like to schedule a session with me, simply email me.

I work with people throughout the United States, North America, beyond to Europe, the UK, the Middle East, and as far away as Australia. So, as long as you have good internet connection then it is possible for us to have a Skype therapy session. So, please simply email me, tell me more about yourself, what you have tried to date, and then I will be happy to explain to you more about how Mindfulness Therapy can work, and then we can schedule a trial session so you can see for yourself the immense effectiveness of using image reprocessing for changing emotions. Thank you!

Online Therapy – Speak with a Therapist online through Skype for highly effective online mindfulness-based therapy for Depression and Anxiety, Social Anxiety and Agoraphobia, Addictions, and other forms of emotional stress, including PTSD and Traumatic Stress.

Contact me to discover more about this online psychotherapy service and to organize an online therapy session with me.

This online therapy service is available world-wide, including the USA, UK and Europe. All you need is a good internet connection and you can start Skype therapy with me.

Peter Strong, PhD is a scientist, spiritual teacher, Mindfulness-based Psychotherapist and Online Therapist who specializes in the study of mindfulness and its application in Mindfulness Meditation Therapy. Besides face-to-face work, Peter also works with individuals and couples onlinevia Skype. He also offers workshops for companies and groups. He is author of the influential book, The Path of Mindfulness Meditation, available through Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca and is also available as a Kindle edition.